1 straight truck heading to IN (delivered)

1 straight truck heading to WI (delivered)

1 trash truck heading to Lake Elmo (staging-Tuesday)

1 straight truck heading to IN (Tuesday)

... spending the night at Rochester MN

Breakfast - only the juice was out, everything else had to be handed to us by the desk clerk. BB wanted a sandwich to nuke, so they gave us one for each of us. I took a Pop-Tart for later. In the room I ate my potato soup from yesterday, still good. Sleep Inn, big buck place and the rooms had no micro-waves. We had to go back down to the breakfast area to nuke our stuff, luckily it was a quiet AM as they only had two microwaves and one was quite dirty.

BB hadn't slept well last night so we were slow getting going this AM.

We are running about 15 minutes late getting going, but we are only a few miles from the drop so we didn't have to wait for them to open. BB leads with the GPS, we will go a different way next time. The road was worse than the speed bumps and the trees were not trimmed for trucks.

1st stop was the drop - Brand new place, the dozer was still doing work between the street and their building. I parked in the entry drive and walked inside. This place still had a 'masks' sign so I put mine on. It took a couple of minutes for someone to pay attention to me, there is no receptionist, I was walking into an office full of cubes.

I told them I had a truck, they guessed correctly which kind and told me where to park it and bring the paperwork and the keys back in. But by the time I got back to my truck, someone was walking my way so I waited. They said for me to grab my stuff (I already had) and that they would sign for it. They just walked around it once and signed. Glad they took it from here as this lot is packed. Acres of trucks parked 2-3 deep with narrow trails between them. I think this is the lot that a driver was telling me about when we were down in Greer a few weeks ago.

From here it was nine miles of city streets to the pick up location.

2nd stop was the shipper. The first building I went to said 'No vendors, drivers, applicants ... go to building #2." So I went to the next building, nowhere did it say office or building #2. Finally someone outside smoking a cigarette asked if they could help. Then they sent me back to where I had been ... 'knock loudly and someone will open the door." I did and someone came, they asked if I was with (my company) and told me where the trucks were parked. This place is 'grab and go.' Keys are in the trucks and they do not sign any paperwork. Here there is only a dozen trucks and we find me right away.

Dispatch was right, the gauge is showing 'E,' so I do not start the truck until I am ready to drop it in gear. It is frosty this AM but it comes off quickly with the washer fluid.

We do make it to the gas station a mile away without running out of fuel. I do not want to leave more fuel than I have to so I guessed I would not make more than 20 mpg so I put in 10 gallons for the 200 mile trip. This truck looked pretty stripped down so I did not look too far for digital info in the dash. It showed the truck had been driven three miles and how many hours and the quality of the oil. That was all I could find to start with.

Once we got on the interstate I had more time to look and found that there was a range, it was 188 miles after I fueled. It would have been nice to know before I fueled but I hadn't looked that hard.

When we get to the exit toll booth for IN I notice that the arm has been broken off, I guess someone decided they were not going to pay no toll.

3rd stop as the Flying J in Lake Station. There is an RV at the next fuel island but they pull out before I am done fueling. This is a busy place without a lot of pumps so I didn't want to be blocking a pump was someone else is waiting. I think I have a better idea on the mileage so I add another five gallons.

When I go in to use the restroom I can see the diesel fuel pumps (mine is a gas, so I fuel with the cars,) there is a bus at those pumps. So when I am done inside, I head outside to look at the bus and find a driver. No driver but I do take a picture of the bus. Someone walking out of the building sees me taking a picture and says hi, when we cross paths, but they are on the phone so I don't say anymore. When I get to the building I look back and that person is walking to the bus. This is a Chicago bus from NY, one I hope to drive some day.

There was one truck going just over the speed limit today and I mostly followed them all the way through Chicago. Most other drivers are 10-20 mph over the speed-limit. One place I was going to change lanes because I thought my lane was ending and I checked my mirrors, no one for a mile ... but when I started moving over someone doing about 30 mph over the limit almost clipped me. They had come from the left lane to pass a truck on the right most lane. And a few feet ahead was a cop but I have no idea where that car went but the cop didn't go after them. Not sure what the 'chase speed' is here.

4th stop is the Kwik Trip in Pleasant Prairie for more fuel. The low fuel light comes on at a range of 70 miles. I lost the range shortly after that and I still had 45 miles to go. 30 miles to go from the fuel station. So I think I am getting less than the 20 mpg, less than the 15 mpg I had used at Lake Station. So I go with 10 mpg and add five gallons. I get back in my truck and I have a range of over 100 miles. ???

As I usually do, I roll my window down when I leave my truck running when I get out. For this short trip I had put my placard in my side window. When I was done fueling I (luckily) noticed that my placard was gone. I looked in the truck, then under the truck then around the parking lot. Finally found it under the rear of my truck. I was able to grab it, no damage done this time.

From here it is mostly side roads, All I know is it is WI-20 and just before the next stop light.

5th stop was the drop. It is 12:30. I find someone who knows who to call. Shortly I see someone wondering around the parking lot but they do not look like who I was expecting. But shortly they come to where I was standing as as the person I had talked to where the driver (me) was. Here also they just do a quick walk around and sign and I am ready to go.

I had called dispatch this AM that I had dropped their truck and I would call back later. Later was going to be after I dropped the 2nd truck, but while I was waiting to get signed here dispatch called me ... I let it go to voice mail.

Now I listen to the message, they want me to grab a truck and bring it back to the lot on my way back. When I called them, we agreed to do it (more on that later) Then I talk to the other dispatchers and one wants me to do a truck tomorrow and the other wants me to do a bus on Thursday/Friday ... and I wanted to do a 2nd truck from IN back to WI next trip.

So we are heading to Dodge Center, spending the night in Rochester because I will be out of hours before we would get that truck back to the office.

6th stop is the Pilot in Mauston. BB is good at wanting a rest area a mile after we pass one, peripheral vision? Then she decides she is also hungry so when we are done at Pilot we head to the Log Cabin Deli. Today's special is gyro's, so that is what we get. It is 3 PM and all we have had during the day is cookies.

At some point we re-hash our up coming trips. This Dodge Center trip hopefully will pay enough to cover tonight's hotel, if we had gone straight home we would not have had a hotel tonight. And this Dodge Center trip is going to delay us a few hours so that we will not be delivering first thing in the AM in Indiana and IF we do the Wausau trip we may not be able to get the bus delivered on Friday. I had already told them a few times that I was not planning on working after Thursday. Now we are looking at working for them on Friday, maybe Saturday depending on what the drop will accept.

The other issue with this situation is I won't know if the bus is complete until after I need to leave IN. What the shipper says is going to ship is not always what does ship, some times they are off by 50%. Not sure how we will handle this yet. We are still hoping to head to CA this weekend.

7th and final stop is the Sleep Inn in Rochester. We do go for a short walk around the block, all paved sidewalks.

Load board

US - 550

IA - 346/344

Yesterdays forecast

About 8 AM we will drop. (YES)

By 9 AM we should have picked up the next truck (YES)

By 1 PM we should have delivered (YES)

By 6 PM we could be home? (no, we were in Rochester by 5 PM)

Tomorrows forecast

8 AM - pick up at Dodge Center

12 noon - pick up at Lake Elmo

5 PM - shut down at Rockford